RESEARCH

Methods, unknowns and questions that can lose.

Research is deliberately separated from Walk so a scientific question cannot silently become a route recommendation or location service.

Evidence method Corrections

WHY SUBSTRIVA EXISTS

A question that should have been easy.

Substriva founder outdoors with two dogs — FOUNDERBuilt from field questions, then held to an evidence standard.

Substriva began with a question about a specific piece of ground: what had been applied to it, when, by whom, and under what program.

The answer was harder to establish than it should have been. Not because silence proves concealment, but because public information is scattered across pages, reports, minutes, contractor material and datasets that were never designed to be read together. Even establishing who manages a particular reserve can be difficult.

Questions about soil health, mycology and environmental exposure helped shape the research problem. Substriva exists because questions like these cannot be investigated responsibly without a reliable record of land-management practice in the first place.

Turn hard-to-answer questions into traceable evidence, and make uncertainty visible instead of filling it with assumptions.

WLP OBSERVATORY · RESEARCH FRAME

Two testable questions. No conclusions yet.

RESEARCH LAYER · NOT A LOCATION SERVICE

Context, not clearance. Nothing on this page indicates that any mushroom, place, season, substrate, preparation or amount is safe. Psilocybin-containing mushrooms are controlled substances in Australia.

ESTABLISHED: Stated in peer-reviewed literature, credited to its authors.
OPEN HYPOTHESIS: A testable idea. Not a finding.
FOUNDER OBSERVATION: An informal, unverified observation that prompted a question. Not evidence.

WHAT IS KNOWNESTABLISHED

Wood-lover paralysis is a documented syndrome of motor weakness.

Wood-lover paralysis (WLP) is weakness reported after eating some wood-associated Psilocybe mushrooms. Substriva did not discover it. Beck, Barlow, Engel and Barratt described it formally in Toxicon (2025) from a retrospective, self-selected online survey of 392 people. Respondents reported weakness affecting walking and grip and, in some cases, swallowing and breathing.

In that sample WLP was reported across several habitats and substrates, and no single environmental factor explained it. Many people with repeated episodes reported at least some from the same local patch, some across more than one season, and some reported another person affected by the same batch. The authors raised fungal population and genetic factors as a direction for genomic and chemical study.

A 2026 Victorian case series in Clinical Toxicology described three patients, from mild weakness to respiratory failure requiring intubation, and concluded that no specific compound has yet been shown to cause WLP. Population-genomic work on Psilocybe subaeruginosa has found it is structured by geography in Australia.

WHAT IS UNKNOWNOPEN

The cause, the mechanism and the relative roles of fungus, environment and person.

Cause: The compound or compounds responsible. Published work considers psilocybin and psilocin alone unlikely to explain WLP.
Mechanism: How the weakness is produced, and why it varies so much between people and episodes.
Prevalence: How often WLP occurs. A self-selected survey cannot estimate it.
Relative contributions: How much depends on fungal genetics, fungal chemistry, growing environment, season, specimen maturity and handling, and individual human factors.

The published survey does not establish:

that WLP is genetic or population-determined;
that environment, substrate provenance or land-management history are irrelevant;
any change in WLP across a season, because availability through a season was not measured;
any chemical difference, because no specimen linked to WLP was chemically analysed;
which compound causes WLP.

1970s–2000sCase reports and community reports

Case reports from Japan, New Zealand and Australia, and long-running community discussion, preceded any formal description.

2020Survey collected

A retrospective, self-selected online survey of 392 people recorded symptoms, individual factors and environmental variables.

2025Formal description

Beck, Barlow, Engel and Barratt described WLP in Toxicon as a variable weakness toxidrome after some wood-associated Psilocybe mushrooms.

2026Victorian clinical cases

Silvester and colleagues reported three patients, from mild weakness to respiratory failure requiring intubation. The cause was not identified.

NOWWhere Substriva sits

Research design and environmental provenance. Substriva did not discover WLP, does not diagnose it and does not know its cause.

RESEARCH PRIORITY 01 · RESEARCH QUESTION - STATUS: OPEN

Population × environment

OPEN HYPOTHESIS

Credit first. The idea that local fungal populations may matter, and the proposal to compare genetically identical material grown on different substrates, come from Beck et al. (2025). Substriva's contribution is a fuller design that can separate the explanations, not the idea itself.

Question. Can genetically characterised WLP-associated populations be distinguished chemically from matched comparison populations of the same species? When authorised researchers study the same lineages under controlled, contrasting conditions, does that distinction persist, change with conditions, appear only in particular combinations, or fail to appear?

Each outcome is informative, including a null result.
Outcome	What it looks like	What it would mean
Lineage-persistent signature	The distinction holds across conditions for the same lineage.	Strengthens an intrinsic, population-level explanation.
Condition-dependent signature	With lineage held constant, the distinction reproducibly tracks conditions.	Supports environmental modification.
Combination-only signature	The distinction appears only for particular lineage and condition pairings.	Supports a genotype × environment interaction.
No reproducible signature	No consistent distinction can be shown.	Weighs against a laboratory-reproducible fungal cause. Reported as a result, not hidden.

Chemistry first. Broad, untargeted chemical analysis of DNA-verified, chain-of-custody specimens against matched comparisons, with blinded analysis, replication and documented handling, comes before any search for a single nominated compound. Storage and drying are known to change fungal chemistry, so handling must be controlled or a difference could be created or erased.

Known limits. Repeat reports from one patch share a genotype, but also a substrate, a microclimate, handling habits, often the same person, and memory. The repeat-patch signal cannot yet separate these. A “WLP-associated” label rests on a human report, not a laboratory test.

RESEARCH PRIORITY 02 · RESEARCH QUESTION - STATUS: OPEN

Seasonal ecological funnel

OPEN HYPOTHESIS

FOUNDER OBSERVATION This question was prompted by an informal, unverified field observation that the overall mix of mushrooms seemed to narrow as a Victorian season went on. It is recorded only as the origin of a research question; it describes no place or habitat and is not a guide to where anything grows. That observation is not evidence that any environment, land-management practice or time of year causes WLP.

Question. As a season's overall mushroom production contracts, do particular genetically or chemically distinguishable populations or habitat types make up a growing share of what remains? If so, are WLP-associated signatures, or ethically obtained WLP reports, disproportionately linked to them?

Seasonal exposure selection: No population changes. The mix of populations available to be encountered changes, so the share contributed by persistent populations rises.
Seasonal biochemical change: The same population changes chemically during the season.

These are different hypotheses and would be tested separately. Neither has been studied for WLP, and a late-season increase in WLP has not itself been documented.

What a fair test needs. Measure availability, not just reports: repeated, structured surveys that account for imperfect detection, with genetic identity and chemistry for what is found. Record weather, moisture, temperature, substrate condition and specimen maturity as separate variables rather than one “season” variable, and define sampling windows by ecological conditions, not calendar months. No locations would be published.

Other explanations to rule out. Managed and accessible places may simply be easier to see and more visited. Over a season, how often people consume, how much, what they handle and store, and what they remember and report can all change and would produce a similar pattern.

FUTURE MECHANISTIC VALIDATION

Only after a reproducible candidate exists, and non-animal methods first.

If a reproducible candidate is identified, the first steps are analytical confirmation, receptor, cellular and electrophysiological methods, and objective clinical characterisation by treating clinicians. A validated preclinical model would be considered only by authorised institutions, after independent scientific justification and Animal Ethics Committee approval, consistent with the Australian code for the care and use of animals for scientific purposes and the principles of Replacement, Reduction and Refinement. To inform causation it would need to reproduce the specific pattern of human WLP, not general sedation, weakness or toxicity.

WHAT WOULD FALSIFY THESE IDEAS

Design it so the hypothesis can lose.

Population hypothesis: Authenticated WLP-associated collections show no consistent chemical or genetic difference from matched comparison collections of the same species.
Environmental modification: A distinguishing signature stays with the lineage whatever the conditions. Consistent WLP-associated biology across very different substrates and management histories would weigh against an environmental-modifier model.
Seasonal exposure selection: Persistent populations or habitat types do not make up a growing share of what is available as the season contracts, or WLP-associated signatures and ethically obtained reports are not concentrated in them once detection and visiting patterns are accounted for.
Seasonal biochemical change: Repeated sampling of the same lineage through a season shows no consistent chemical trajectory.

Negative and null results will be reported.

VARIABLES KEPT SEPARATE

Fungal population / genotypeOPEN · RAISED IN LITERATURE

Fungal chemistryOPEN

Growing environment × populationOPEN

Seasonal exposure compositionOPEN · FOUNDER-PROMPTED

Specimen maturity and handlingOPEN

Amount and repeat exposureOPEN

Individual human factorsOPEN

Substrate and material provenanceOPEN

WLP variationcause unidentified

ETHICS AND SAFETY. This Observatory is not a diagnostic, identification or location service.Substriva does not collect, grow, supply or test mushrooms, does not recruit people who use them, and does not collect personal health information. Exact fungal locations are not published. Nothing here gives instructions for finding, identifying, preparing or consuming mushrooms, and Substriva does not support self-experimentation. Any research described here would be carried out only by authorised institutions after all applicable licences, permits, land-manager consents, human or animal ethics approvals and independent legal review have been obtained. If someone has significant weakness, difficulty swallowing or difficulty breathing after eating wild mushrooms, call 000. For poisoning advice in Australia, contact the Victorian Poisons Information Centre on 13 11 26.

Published sources

Beck SA, Barlow C, Engel L, Barratt MJ. Wood-lover paralysis: describing a toxidrome with symptoms of weakness caused by some lignicolous (wood-loving) Psilocybe mushrooms. Toxicon 2025;264:108450.
Silvester A, Hampton S, May TW, Holmes GD, Leang YH. Clinical Toxicology 2026;64(7):619–621. Victorian case series.
McTaggart AR and colleagues. Fungal Systematics and Evolution 2024;14 (population genomics of Psilocybe subaeruginosa, 89 isolates).

A STEWARDSHIP PRINCIPLE

We keep asset records for the things we build. Substrate is something we build.

Mulch and woodchip in public corridors are placed, maintained, topped up and replaced. They have a supply chain, a maintenance cycle and a biological life after installation. Treating them as recordable public infrastructure does not imply responsibility for what grows there or what people do with it. It creates a better basis for provenance, treatment history, lower-impact maintenance and ecological monitoring.

GARDINERS CREEK · REFERENCE CORRIDOR

Prove the method at depth before applying it at width.

REFERENCE CORRIDOR

Gardiners Creek is useful precisely because it is ordinary: a suburban waterway crossing jurisdictions and management responsibilities. Boroondara's no-glyphosate trial along the creek ran from December 2022 to April 2025; that was the council's trial, not Substriva's. Substriva's role is to use corridors like this to test whether manager identity, documented practice, unknowns and subsequent change can be made legible together.

01Manager visibility

Establish who is responsible for each segment without inferring management from LGA boundaries.

02Documented practice

Attach claims to dated public sources and preserve what those sources do not establish.

03Unknowns made visible

Show gaps as gaps rather than converting silence into claims about treatment or safety.

04Change over time

Track corrections, new records, alternative practices and measurable outcomes.

05Replication

Transfer the same evidence contract to another corridor without lowering the standard.

The corridor is not important because of what it is. It is important because of what it is like.

Research & Education sandbox

Explore Substriva's evidence model using synthetic records, examine how provenance and UNKNOWN are represented, and provide structured feedback without entering the land-manager workspace.

Explore the research sandbox